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Ginza Crossing

Ginza, Tokyo, Japan

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Mrs Hunts Cottage, on Maria Island, Tasmania. The house was built in the early 1900's. on the site of the former, convict era, magistrates residence (1846).

History

Ruby Absolum married Henry Hunt and they moved to the island in the mid-1920s. From about 1930 they lived in this cottage. After her husband became ill and her children left the island, Ruby stayed on alone from the early 1960s.
She became famous for running a pedal wireless — the only communication link between Maria Island and mainland Tasmania — sending telegrams and weather reports to Hobart. She was one of the very last permanent residents to leave the island (in 1968), just before it became a national park in 1971.

ARLINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Pete Hegseth heeft maandag tijdens een onaangekondigd bezoek aan Israël een ontmoeting gehad met de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Dat meldt Axios op basis van twee ingewijde bronnen.

Het nieuws over de reis van Hegseth komt een dag nadat de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump zijn steun uitsprak voor Netanyahu bij de parlementsverkiezingen van volgende week in Israël. Het zijn de eerste verkiezingen sinds de Hamas-aanval van 7 oktober 2023.

Volgens opiniepeilingen gaat de coalitie van Netanyahu naar verwachting haar meerderheid verliezen.

Reuters kon het bezoek niet direct bevestigen. Het Pentagon wilde niet reageren, en de Israëlische ambassade in Washington reageerde niet direct op een verzoek om commentaar.

joshuark writes: Professor Christopher Marquis makes a provocative argument about business schools: "We need to abolish them." A 20-year business educator at Harvard, Cornell and Cambridge, Marquis argues in The New York Times and on LinkedIn that MBA programs sanctify profit-driven dealmaking at the expense of public life. "That's not the institution failing," he writes. "Sadly, it's the institution working." "Business school doesn't just hand out skills and a network," argues Marquis, "it quietly reshapes how people see the world, rewarding dealmaking, simplification, and optimization for financial metrics, while workers and communities become afterthoughts."

Marquis points to research suggesting that business-school-trained CEOs often benefit shareholders at the expense of workers, without delivering measurable improvements in company performance... "[W]hen a business-school-trained CEO takes over a firm, wages fall and labor's share of income drops, with no gain in productivity," writes Marquis. "In both the U.S. and Denmark, what passes for the 'managerial skill' of business-school graduates turns out to be a transfer of wealth away from workers and toward shareholders. Students deserve better than a machine that narrows their sense of what's possible."

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TP-Link plans to begin assembling routers in Mississippi as early as 2027 after the FCC banned imports of new foreign-made consumer routers over security concerns. Engadget reports: The company has signed a letter of intent with manufacturer Key Tronic and, pending approval from regulators, TP-Link says stateside assembly of its routers could start at a Mississippi production line as soon as early 2027.

Once things are up and running, Wi-Fi 8 routers are expected to be among the first TP-Link products that Key Tronic assembles. TP-Link claims that the agreement is part of its "long-term effort to accelerate US investment in high-tech manufacturing and job creation, designing and assembling next-generation products for American consumers here on American soil."

The company said it will still have to source components from outside the US. "Many [components] are just not available from a domestic source, and this is not a TP-Link issue," TP-Link's corporate affairs officer Steve Kovsky told PC Mag. "This is an issue for all manufacturers that are trying to onshore manufacturing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Social media amplify the worst excesses of what passes for public discourse, while some media outlets foment polarisation

If the increasingly vituperative tenor of our public discourse, online and verbal, has fully trailed America’s into the murky dungeon of political violence with the appalling alleged attack on Helen Haines, Australia’s political class has only itself to blame.

Amid outpourings of concern from across the political spectrum (including from people who have fostered considerable vicious personal animus online and in the parliament) for the gravely injured and much-respected member for Indi, it is blindingly evident that the political square has long been utterly incapable of self-regulation.

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Ukrainian president tells US senators the delayed missiles have already been paid for by European countries, amid growing rift. What we know on day 1,700

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the US is deliberately delaying deliveries of interceptor missiles to Ukraine, deepening a public spat with Donald Trump. Speaking to US senators on Monday, the Ukrainian president claimed that “the Pentagon is delaying the delivery of missiles” already paid for by European countries under the prioritised Ukraine requirements list (Purl) program. According to Zelenskyy, the shipment is awaiting the signature of the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. A White House official, who spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said the US “continues to play a constructive role in speaking to both sides in working towards bringing the war to an end”.

Zelenskyy also said several European countries were ready to transfer Patriot interceptor missiles from their own stockpiles but were still awaiting US approval. “All of this suggests that some political decision has been made to slow down the support for us,” he said in remarks released by the Ukrainian presidency. The Washington ‌Post reported the Trump ⁠administration ​had not approved ⁠the ⁠transfer of the interceptor ‌missiles ‌to Ukraine.

Trump has blamed Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries for soaring fuel prices that are a major issue in coming US midterm elections. “Maybe it’s time for ​Zelenskyy ‌to get ‌somebody else to negotiate” to end the war with Russia, Trump said on Monday. Zelenskyy said US decisions taken ⁠on the war – including delays in arms shipments and restrictions on ⁠intelligence sharing – were “hard ⁠to explain”. Washington denies making any changes to intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.

Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Zelenskyy said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow. Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat said on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv about 11pm, Andrew Roth reports. Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike. Ukraine did receive a warning before a subsequent strike, Ihnat added. Zelenskyy said on social media on Monday morning: “Once again, Russia launched a ballistic missile attack in multiple waves throughout the night, and once again, there was no warning from our partners.”

Six people, including young children, were killed when a Russian drone struck a park in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, authorities said. Zelenskyy decried a “pure atrocity”, saying on Facebook the drone “struck people directly – in a park near an ordinary cafe”, and a one-year-old girl was among those killed. The strike on Monday in Nova Vodolaga had also killed the girl’s mother.

Trump’s ⁠envoy Steve Witkoff is ⁠set to travel to Norway ​this week for the next round of negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters quoted three people familiar with the matter as saying. Two of them said they expected Zelenskyy to ⁠attend the meetings. Another source said Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was expected to take part in the talks, was sick and would attend virtually. The Oslo discussions were expected to include Zelenskyy, Norwegian prime ⁠minister Jonas Gahr Store, representatives of the E4 – made up of the UK, France, Germany and Poland – the EU and Nato. Witkoff is also set ​to travel to Russia to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin, two sources said. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the schedules were tentative and could change.

Pope Leo has held a phone call with Zelenskyy, the Vatican said, and urged Ukraine and Russia to cooperate to let aid and ⁠food into the ⁠blockaded town ​of Oleshky. Residents of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town have reported a deepening food crisis. The call ⁠on Monday came three days after the pontiff asked Putin to arrange a ceasefire so aid could enter Oleshky, a request the Kremlin did ⁠not address when it said Putin would help organise supplies.

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Demonstrations over poor public services and rising costs spiralled over the weekend, with shops looted and property vandalised

• Why are people protesting across Europe?

Italy’s government will dispatch 500 army troops to “defend Milan” after two days ⁠of unrest that saw demonstrators ⁠clash with police, ​loot shops and vandalise property, deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday.

The deployment is expected to be included in a package of security measures to be approved at ⁠a cabinet meeting expected on Tuesday, and comes as shops in central Milan closed early and boarded up their windows, fearing a fresh outbreak of violence in Italy’s financial capital.

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El Capricho, also known as Villa Quijano, is one of the few buildings Antoni Gaudí completed outside Catalonia. Built in Comillas between 1883 and 1885 for Máximo Díaz de Quijano, it is laid out to follow the sun from room to room, which earned it the nickname of the architectural sunflower. Today it is run as a cultural space that welcomes thousands of visitors a month, from families and school groups to international tourists. Its image had not kept pace with that role. The brand needed to work across tickets, signage, workshops, merchandise, digital channels and the building's 140th anniversary, and it had to do so without ever competing with the building it represents. The question was how to change the image of a Gaudí building, and who should be part of that decision.

The US Department of Homeland Security on Monday issued an order directing federal civilian agencies not to use technology products from Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, and to remove any existing implementations. The order [PDF] is broad, as it requires agencies to ditch "all DeepSeek and DeepSeek-affiliate products, and third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations." Complying will be tricky as it is not clear which third-party products and services have been developed using DeepSeek's wares. Nor is it clear whether "developed using" means providing ongoing access to DeepSeek models via API or simply refers to any app vibe-coded with the help of DeepSeek. It also leaves open the question of AI gateways. Services such as OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway make DeepSeek's models available through APIs. And those using gateway services may find themselves using DeepSeek models without meaning to do so. OpenRouter, for example, "routes requests to the best available providers for your model." It selects what the service deems to be the best fit provider of AI services. Vercel AI Gateway does the same by default. So federal civilian agencies could be using DeepSeek models inadvertently, if they haven't taken steps to constrain their AI providers. A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. US officials have contemplated a ban on DeepSeek since the China-based AI lab released DeepSeek-R1 in early 2025. On February 6, 2025, US Representative Darin LaHood (R-IL) and US Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) introduced the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act. The lawmakers characterised DeepSeek as a national security threat because its AI models purportedly capture data on US citizens and provide it to the Chinese government. The bill never made it out of committee, but various government agencies followed through. The US Defense community and lawmakers have already exiled DeepSeek. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) started blocking DeepSeek on the Pentagon’s IT networks in January 2025. The US Navy, NASA, and the US House of Representatives took similar steps. So did various US states. While the DHS announcement has taken a long time to reach civilian agencies, its timing may be a boon for American AI companies which, like Anthropic, hope to soon go public. That's because open weight models represent competition, and those from China have proven particularly popular both in terms of capabilities and cost. Government agencies that cannot deploy such models (and the taxpayers who fund those agencies) may be stuck paying the prices set by favored US model makers. Concerns about the security and privacy of DeepSeek's iOS mobile app surfaced shortly after DeepSeek-R1 debuted. Several months later, a December 2025 report on the DeekSeek mobile app for Android and iOS cited similar concerns, including plaintext information leaks, links to servers run by Chinese tech firms, and shortcomings like lack of SSL pinning. These issues, however, are mainly mobile security problems that afflict many apps, particularly those that integrate third-party advertising SDKs from companies based outside the US. They don't really address the additional risks posed by the capture of text prompts and responses, or how local secrets and other sensitive information can be ingested by AI agents. Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, told The Register in an email that while there are legitimate national security reasons to keep DeepSeek's app and servers away from government systems, the way this particular order is written exceeds that requirement in ways that aren't practical. "Banning DeepSeek's own app and API is workable," said Moussouris. "The problem is the ban on 'third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations.' The order doesn't say what 'developed using' means. It could technically cover any model derived from DeepSeek and more importantly, any software whose developers used DeepSeek to write or test code. An AI software bill of materials doesn't record which tools developers used, so it would be no real help. Every vendor would have to attest that nothing it relies on ever touched DeepSeek. There's no practical way to verify that." Moussouris also took issue with the breadth of the order, noting that applying the rules to US-hosted versions of DeepSeek's models goes too far. "The risks the order cites are mostly about data flowing to DeepSeek's servers in China, its data collection, and its app," she said. "US hosting avoids most of those. "For the model itself, the order says only that it may contain malware or vulnerabilities, which is true of all software. NIST found DeepSeek more vulnerable to prompt injection than US models, though every model has that problem. NIST also found it easier to jailbreak, but jailbreak guardrails often get in the way of defenders." ®